Fever - Burned Part 19

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me"

MAC.

I'm an aimless, trapped barfly, stalked by Unseelie ghouls who have once again replenished their numbers, confined to Chester's by Ryodan's insistence that I guard against a threat that isn't the threat he thinks it is, while driving myself crazy worrying about a genuine threat of cataclysmic proportions.

There's a black hole, or its close approximation, growing beneath my feet, and who knows how many more forming beyond the club's walls. There were numerous icings in Dublin, more outside the city, and according to Ryodan, hundreds in various countries around the world.

Are innocent people, like the Unseelie ghouls, accidently brus.h.i.+ng up against them and dying? How large are the other globes? Was Ryodan's really the first or has the h.o.a.r Frost King been in our realm longer than we know? Perhaps it started in China, or Australia, or even America. How solid is our information? How soon can we send scouts to learn more?

How close have I walked to one of those quantum pinp.r.i.c.ks, not realizing Death was right there in the street with me, a misstep away?

Tired of wandering from one dance floor to the next, growing increasingly aggravated by the patrons, I decide to stake out the Sinatra subclub. The old world elegance appeals to me and it's mostly empty-or at least it was before me and my dark, smelly army arrived. "Get off those stools!" I try to shoo them. They resettle with what I imagine are scornful looks beneath voluminous hoods. I recall the metallic flash I glimpsed as one of them was devoured by an impossibly dense globe of corrupted s.p.a.ce-time and wonder what would happen if I tried to yank back one of their cowls to see a face.

I decide against it. I'd rather not know just how hideous my second skins are. I have enough nightmares.

I perch on a leather bar stool between them and begin watching an obviously inebriated bartender in a dirty, wrinkled tux that looks like he slept in it make the worst martinis I've ever seen.

Clubs call pretty much anything a martini now, and there's no question he got his credentials at the school of life. He should be ashamed. I rummage in my purse, pop an aspirin in my mouth, and crunch it to dispel headache residue.

Barrons went through the Silvers to join the rest of the Nine, hunting for Dani. I prefer him there than wandering around the city without me. Though I've not gotten the faintest tweak from my inner antenna, it won't be long before the princess resurfaces somewhere. And it's not going to be on top of Barrons.

Dancer says we need Dani now more than ever. She was the one who figured out what the h.o.a.r Frost King was doing, and he hopes their brains combined hold the key to relocking the doors that are opening in great yawning black holes all over our world.

If it can even be done.

According to physics, what we seek is impossible but since the walls came down between Man and Faery, human laws of physics no longer apply. I wonder if the fragments of Faery worlds I call IFPs are contributing to the black-hole problem. The boundaries of our world are a mess and have been for a while, creating a highly unstable environment where pretty much anything could go wrong, as it did eons ago in the ancient Hall of All Days and the Silvers. I wonder that we didn't see something like this coming.

I munch an olive to get the taste of aspirin out of my mouth.

"Hey, you didn't order a drink! Stay the f.u.c.k outta my condiment tray!" the bartender barks, hostile, and a little slurry.

Whatever happened to pretty girls getting free drinks? Or at least one d.a.m.n olive.

I peer up at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. There I am, blond hair, blue eyes, terrific white teeth (thanks Mom, Dad, and braces!), a nice mouth with a generous lower lip, clear skin. I think I'm pretty.

"And you guys"-the bartender snaps at my ghouls, and I think, Good luck with that-"order drinks or get off my stools!"

"You've been grazing on candied cherries for the past ten minutes," I tell him. "You've eaten half a jar. Stow it." People are starving in Dublin but Chester's has condiments.

He flips me off with both hands and rotates the birds around each other.

I turn sideways on the stool so I don't have to see him and resume my brood. The city I love is finally coming back to life, and although I have personal problems, they are slightly more manageable-or at least a little less urgent at the moment-than our newfound global issues.

My dark companion attempts to seize the moment.

Read me, open me, I possess the answers you seek, it lies. I will show you how to heal this world.

Again with the been-there-done-that. I don't believe the Unseelie King dumped any knowledge about how to patch holes in worlds into his book of dark magic. It's another fake carrot at the end of the Sinsar Dubh's endless profusion of sticks.

Besides, it wouldn't give a rat's a.s.s about saving this world. It would leave and find another. And another. Ad infinitum. I've not forgotten it once said to me: Can there be any act of creation that does not first destroy? Villages fall. Cities rise. Humans die. Life springs from the soil wherein they lie. Is not any act of destruction, should Time enough pa.s.s, an act of creation?

Our worries about rebuilding, parceling out districts, and reinstating currency now seem insignificant, but Ryodan insists we carry on. Barrons agrees that not only must we pursue an illusion of normalcy, but conceal from the general populace the danger the world is in. They contend if people believe the world might be ending, it'll be the riots of Halloween all over again.

Oh, yeah. Politicians R Us.

I seriously doubt we're going to be able to hide it long. If they're still too small to spot, it's only a matter of time before they're not. People will start seeing them, messing with them, vanis.h.i.+ng.

I half expected Barrons and Ryodan to say: screw it, pack up, we're leaving. They're immortal and there are countless worlds. There's nothing to stop them from circling their wagons and heading off for the universe's vast, untamed Wild West.

Yet, they stay and I'm glad they do because there's no way I'm giving up on my world. This is what we've been fighting about since the dawn of time when the Fae first arrived on our planet and began messing with it. Earth is ours. I'm not letting them have it. I'm not letting them destroy it.

Not on my watch.

Too bad I have no idea how I'm going to back up my b.a.l.l.sy position, but I've been in impossible situations before and got out of them.

My brain processes what I just watched happen. Apparently I couldn't keep my eyes off the pathetic excuse for a bartender and turned back toward him at some point without realizing it. "Oh, for heaven's sake, you just ruined that drink! Who taught you to pour?"

"f.u.c.k you, b.i.t.c.h. Ain't your bar."

I stand and hurry around the counter. My flock rustles in behind me. "It is now. Get out. I'm taking over." I can't let him tarnish my profession anymore. He just served a smoked martini that had begun promisingly, with gin and a dash of single malt Scotch-then apparently forgot what he was doing and added vermouth, and insult to injury, an olive, pimento intact, instead of a lemon twist. Yellow was Alina's favorite color and I used to take my time making my lemon twists as complex and pretty as they could be, little origami fruit peels. My mouth puckers in sympathy for the silver-haired gentleman sipping the drink. It's no wonder the world no longer knows what martinis are.

"Who the f.u.c.k do you think you are?" the bleary-eyed bartender snarls drunkenly as I approach. "This is my bar. Get your a.s.s back on that stool and buy a drink or leave, you stupid c.u.n.t. And get those smelly f.u.c.ks out of here!"

I see red. Like I'd drink anything he poured. And I really hate the c-word. No clue why. It just doesn't work for me. Seems I have my own event horizon: inactivity, worry, and frustration have devoured my patience, sucked it away into a deep dark hole from which it may never return.

I walk straight for him and pop him in the face with my fist. Not too hard. Just hard enough to get him to go away.

His nose spurts blood- YES BLOOD YES! the Book explodes. Kill him, worthless piece of human tras.h.!.+ Take this bar and take the club and we will K'VRUCK THEM ALL!

I rummage for my seventh-grade performance-where did I leave off? I remember being eleven. I was happy then, in a much simpler world. Or so I thought.

Bloodred like the blood of Mick O'Leary, the man you RIPPED to pieces with your bare hands then CHEWED- For a second I can't find my place, the word "chewed" throws me off so badly, and instead of focusing I wonder if I had blood in my mouth that day and didn't notice. Panicked, I plunge into my recitation at the first place I can think of and shout, " 'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil, prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent or whether tempest tossed thee here ash.o.r.e-' "

The bartender clutches his nose and stares at me like I have three heads. I toss him the positively filthy bar towel he'd been using to dry clean gla.s.ses. Well, as clean as they could be considering the water in the sink behind the bar is disgustingly black with weak gray soapy suds. I realize I'm still spouting poetry and terminate mid-twelfth stanza.

"You're off your f.u.c.king rocker!"

"You have no idea. I don't have a rocker anymore. I don't even have a f.u.c.king porch to put it on. And there certainly aren't slow paddling fans or magnolia trees blossoming above aforementioned missing chair." G.o.d, I get homesick for the South sometimes. A sunny day. A polka-dot bikini and a swimming pool. One day I'm going back to Ashford. I'll walk around and pretend I'm a normal person. Just for a day or two. "I'll punch you again. So move." I crowd him with my body and force him to walk backward through my throng of Unseelie, out from behind the lovely bar I realize I'm really looking forward to tending.

It'll feel like old times, soothe me. Ground me to the real Mac Lane again.

"I'm telling the boss, you freaky b.i.t.c.h!"

"You do that. Tell him the name's Mac when you talk to him and see how well that goes over. Now get out. And stay out."

I turn to the gentleman who's completely unfazed by our bizarre altercation-this is Chester's-and is currently studying his awful martini as if trying to decide what went so wrong with it, and pluck the gla.s.s from his hand. It wasn't even the right gla.s.s.

"Smoked?"

He nods.

"Be right up."

I pull the drain on the filthy water, rummage beneath the bar for clean towels, wash my hands, grab a chilled gla.s.s, and stir a perfectly proportioned smoked martini. I'm so used to dealing with my wraiths, I slide smoothly through them.

When he tastes it, he smiles appreciatively and the ground beneath my feet solidifies just like that. Familiar routine is balm to a fragmented soul.

I begin rearranging the liquor on my shelves the proper way, humming beneath my breath.

Inside me a book whumps closed. For the time being. Looks like I've learned one more way to temporarily shut it up. Poems and bartending. Who'd have thought? But Band-Aids for my disease aren't what I'm after. I want a surgeon to perform an operation that leaves a deep incision where something nasty used to be, followed by a scar to remind me every day that it's over and I survived.

And for that I need a half-mad king. Not getting any closer to finding the spell stuck in this place.

"Hey, Mac," Jo says, dropping onto a stool. "What's with all the Unseelie behind your bar?"

"Don't ask. Just don't even go there."

She shrugs. "Have you seen Dani lately?"

That question has become a stake through my heart. One of these days I'm just going to snap, Yes, and I'm the jacka.s.s that chased her into the Hall of All Days, so crucify me and put me out of my misery.

I give my standard, noncommittal reply.

"How about Kat?"

"Not for a few days."

Beneath a cap of short dark hair, s.h.i.+mmering with blond and auburn highlights, Jo's delicate face is pale, her eyes red from crying. I shake my head and debate saying something about what I saw this morning.

My brain vetoes the idea. My mouth says, "I saw what you did this morning," proving my suspicion that the road between the two is as bad as the highways around Atlanta, under eternal, hazardous construction.

"What do you mean?" she says warily.

"Ryodan nodded and you turned away. You dumped him."

She inhales sharply and holds it a moment, then, "I suppose you think I'm crazy."

"No," I say. "I think you're beautiful and smart and talented and deserve a man that can feel with something besides his d.i.c.k."

She blinks and looks surprised, and it p.i.s.ses me off because she should know all of that.

"I understood from the beginning what he was, Mac," she says tiredly. "What it was between us. But he has such ... and I never felt ... and I started wanting to believe even though I knew better. Began telling myself all kinds of lies. So I moved on before he did. Pride was all I had left to salvage."

"Doesn't make it any easier though, does it?" I say sympathetically. I feel my bartending skills blossoming: the pouring, listening, steering away from complete anesthetization with alcohol toward something that might actually help, change the person's life, shake it up in a good way.

"I don't think I'm strong enough to stay away from him, Mac. I'm going to quit working here. I can't see him every day. You know what they're like. He may not have taken anyone else up those stairs this morning, but he will. I'm going to ask Kat if I can move back to the abbey."

"Know the best way to forget a man?"

"A frontal lobotomy?"

I snort, thinking of that song we used to play back home in the Brickyard that went, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. "No. With two men."

She smiles but it fades swiftly. "I'm afraid I'd be needing ten to clear my head of that man."

"Or perhaps," I say, "a single incredible one." Stupendous s.e.x is a drug, addictive, consuming. I know from personal experience.

"Sounds like you have someone in mind. I'm so not in the mood, Mac. He'd only pale in comparison."

"Maybe not." I lean across the counter and speak softly into her ear.

When she leaves, wearing a thoughtful expression, I ponder the seed I planted, hoping it yields healthy fruit. I think it will. I think it's exactly what she needs to buffer her heart, cleanse her body from craving the touch of a man we both know she can never hold.

Besides, there's a possibility it will p.i.s.s Ryodan off, in a territorial sort of way, which will still further ease the sting to Jo's wounded heart.

Heaven knows the man I pointed her at won't mind.

I smile and line a few choice bottles up on my counter, and try my hand at pouring high and flashy. Patrons love a good show.

When I glance up to greet a couple of new customers, I inhale sharply and stare right past them, staggered by the vision I see, unable to process my abrupt change in fortune. Talk about tall, dark, and utterly unexpected.

Time grinds to a halt and everything goes still around me, the thronging patrons receding beyond the edges of my periphery, leaving only one: the Dreamy-Eyed Guy, wearing an amused expression, is standing three clubs away, watching me toss my bottles flamboyantly, and I recall a night I watched him do the same.

He inclines his head, dark eyes starry. Nice show.

The Unseelie King is back in town, wearing his old skins again!

We've been scouring ancient books and scrolls for months, trying to find the spell to summon him, and the surgeon I need just arrived out of the blue! The one with b.u.t.terfly fingers who creates and destroys worlds and can surely remove this great staining darkness inside me!

I didn't think he'd ever come back willingly, off with his concubine somewhere, rekindling her memory and reclaiming her love.

Elation floods me. I can get my life back, and while I'm at it, get rid of my smelly Unseelie, too. Approach the queen about the Song of-I swiftly terminate that thought and repadlock it.

I vault the counter, sending gla.s.ses flying and shoving startled patrons off their stools, but by the time my feet hit the floor, the Dreamy-Eyed Guy is gone.

18.